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Thursday, 29 May 2014

Where Do Boro Stand Now?

We return to examine Boro's 2013-14, looking back on what the team has achieved and looking forward to what they can, and should, aspire to achieve

To sum up Boro's intermittently promising, mostly maddening but in the end underwhelming 2013-14, one should look no further than the 1-0 win at eventually promoted Burnley in hindsight.

The result appeared to re-ignite very faint play-off hopes, which, typically for Boro, were swiftly extinguished in the next two games. The pattern of the match, a heroic backs-to-the-wall display enlivened by some genuinely pleasing-to-the-eye attacking play, was more of a telling illustration of why Boro are where they are these days.

For back in August 2009, in the earliest days of Boro's return to second tier football, Boro would have marched to a Championship ground with an aura of confidence, a sense of entitlement, and the elements of class required to both get results and strike fear into opposition sides. Hence a convincing 3-0 victory at Swansea that would seem hugely inconceivable today.

At Burnley, we were the underdogs, the no-hopers, the team expected to lose but capable of winning on a good day. Fondly recall, if you will, our victories at Old Trafford under McClaren, or England's win over Argentina in the 2002 World Cup.

Once upon a time, Boro were the England of the Premiership. Now, we seem more like the England of the Championship. A good team that can do better than most at their level, but is rarely likely to be a top dog.

We start the season by cranking up expectation levels, and we savage the players and managers who don't meet them. Like the English press, we have a worrying tendency to build Boro up and knock them down.

If Aitor Karanka received frightening criticism during the deepest, darkest recesses of the Boro Nil period, it was because he was a victim of his own success. He had artificially raised expectations to the point where Boro, as usual, could not live with them. Mere mentions of the play-offs under his reign turned a team who, for all the talk of a backbone, seemed to shiver and retreat from their goals when it mattered most of all.

The end result was a midtable finish that rather depressingly feels like the norm as far as present day Boro are concerned. Naturally, we will try convincing ourselves that if only Jacob Butterfield's ghost goal had stood, the hand of Henderson had been spotted and even a thimbleful of additional goals had been scored during the Noughty, Noughty Boro Nil period we'd be above Brighton, but we'd really be fooling no one but ourselves. The words “Championship” and “success” are no longer synonymous with Boro, if they ever were, and we have to deal with it.

I think it is time for everyone associated with Boro to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide not only what counts as success to Boro in this day and age, but if such success can be attained with the resources in hand.

Aitor Karanka's modus operandi, to me, translates as part Javier Clemente, part-present day Spain; a blend of faith, hard work, loyalty, systems and teamwork. All things that can get clubs moving in the right direction, leading them to a point where they can really achieve things. But a degree of vision and individualism is required to take teams that step further.

We still find ourselves asking, is AK truly visionary enough to take this team into the top flight and keep them there? More importantly, are the players? Ambition and vision are not the same thing. You can have all the will and drive to achieve in the world, but it counts for nothing without the wherewithal to achieve it.

Despite hugely promising signs in the last eight games, with the exception of the Millwall and Reading defeats, of course, there remains a doubt that Boro's “dreamers” have not been entirely won over by AK. The troublemakers have been punished, the players who don't fit into the coach's plans have been dropped and later reinstated, and Boro's best individual players have only shone sporadically, giving the unjust impression that the squad are victims of a system and regime that is not allowing them to play to their strengths. It is a theory that runs anathema to the football “dream” of a team being built around the skills of its best players and not the “vanity” of its coaches.

If AK is guilty of imposing this theory on the players, and I don't believe he is, frankly, it isn't his fault so much as a present day football climate where money has become far too important. The need for effective systems that “work” and “get the job done” are likely to overtake the desire for individual expression in the eyes of chairmen everywhere. As Tony Mowbray would say, it is what it is.

But that cuts no dice with fans. The need to *feel* successful, to *believe* that one is making progress, regularly overtakes actual progress. Discipline, organisation, solidity and professionalism are forgotten amidst the desire for the tricky wingers that will get us jumping off our feet, the match-winning Roy Of The Rovers thunderbolts that will have us dreaming anything is possible, and a star forward that regularly scores goals of all kinds. In short, fans prioritise entertainment over attainment. Of course, there's nothing really wrong with that. Entertainment sells. It fills our hearts with excitement. What is wrong, and I've noted this before, is the thought that we can have it both ways when we haven't even fully had it one way first.

AK has been criticised for overrelying on “higher quality” loanees like Shay Given, Kenneth Omeruo and Nate Chalobah at the expense of developing young players like Ben Gibson, Richie Smallwood and Jason Steele. What the detractors fail to take into account is just how valuable the loanees were to Boro: they not only defined the positions of strength that Boro needed to fill, but they inspired everyone around them. They set high standards for the rest of the squad to aspire to.

A legacy of the Steve McClaren era was that Dave Parnaby's graduates were then driven by a feeling of entitlement that does not come naturally to our current youngsters. Smallwood, Steele, Adam Reach, Luke Williams and especially Ben Gibson may be among the most gifted academy graduates we have produced, yet the feeling persists that they will never reach the heights attained by the likes of David Wheater, Adam Johnson, James Morrison, Tony McMahon, Andrew Taylor, Lee Cattermole or even Matthew Bates. Those lads were blooded, nurtured and trained in an atmosphere in which Boro believed they belonged in the top division. They all played in Europe. While Reach made his name against Doncaster and Burnley, Cattermole starred at Rome's Olympic Stadium.

Consider, now, how the top level experience of Given, Omeruo and Chalobah will have surely rubbed off on today's generation. That can only be a good thing.

What we are really missing are players who can genuinely make a difference on a consistent basis. The reality has dawned upon us that Emmanuel Ledesma, Muzzy Carayol and Albert Adomah, exciting though they can be, are not the kind of players you can count upon to dictate a game or win a match regularly. Frankly, they wouldn't be playing for Boro otherwise!

And we still lack true *leadership*. It's been said that the likes of Brian Clough and Jack Charlton succeeded in management by getting a few “stars in the making” alongside underachievers and convincing them they were world beaters; and the whole ended up far greater than the sum of their parts. If you could call Omeruo and Chalobah “stars in the making”, then you could say AK has already succeeded to a point.

But has AK found a genuine leader who believes in his vision? I'm not so sure. If Grant Leadbitter has sort of stood out as a leader in midfield, I don't believe either Jonathan Woodgate or Rhys Williams is the answer in defence. This is a matter that urgently needs addressing.

Regardless of the playing personnel on board next season, the potential for Boro is there, as it always has been pre-season. AK's post-match interviews remain indecipherable, but most on-pitch roles have been defined, belief has been restored and a strong coaching set up is in place.

It is now down to the club, the fans, the players and management team to ensure that the strong end to the season will not be another false dawn.

For now, let's enjoy the World Cup.

Up The Boro!

(Originally published online at Middlesbrough's Evening Gazette on May 26, 2014.)